House of the Dragon Season 2 suggests that Saera Targaryen is the mother of Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew). Episode 7 of the series depicts one of the most important events of Fire & Blood, the Red Harvest, from which Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) new dragon riders emerge: Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Hugh, and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett).
House of the Dragon (Image Credit: HBO)
Instead of keeping dragons limited to legitimate members of House Targaryen, the Black Queen offers bastards the opportunity to claim a dragon. Despite her fetish for incest, there is a host of unrecognized Targaryen children. While some are unsure of their lineage (despite his silver hair, his claim to be the bastard brother of Viserys (Paddy Considine), and Daemon (Matt Smith), Ulf isn’t certain he’s a Targaryen), others are certain of their Valyrian blood (though not acknowledged by Corlys (Steve Toussaint), Addam and his brother Alyn (Abubakar Salim) know they are his sons).
Who is Saera Targaryen? In House of the Dragon: Hugh Hammer’s Mother?
Hugh Hammer has no doubts about his Targaryen blood and feels that Rhaenyra’s call is an opportunity to restore some balance after his daughter’s death. The King’s Landing blacksmith has enough Targaryen features to belong to the dragon-seeds, but he doesn’t base his connection solely on the platinum look: Hugh is certain he has Targaryen blood through his mother.
Although he doesn’t give his name during his conversation with his wife, Hugh reveals much about her by touching on one of the greatest tragedies in Targaryen history. While Fire & Blood never confirms Hugh’s parentage, his brief backstory suggests he is the grandson of King Jaehaerys through his wayward daughter, Saera Targaryen.
Hugh Hammer’s Ancestry in House of the Dragon?
In episode 7 of season 2 of House of the Dragon, Team Black attempts to recruit riders to claim Vermithor and Silverwing. Rhaenyra announces to the people of King’s Landing that anyone with Targaryen blood can attempt to bond with a dragon, regardless of their social standing. Hugh Hammer sees an opportunity to improve his family’s quality of life, but his wife, Kat (Ellora Torchia), begs him to stay.
Hugh claims it’s worth the risk. After years of marriage and the loss of a child, the blacksmith finally reveals to his wife the truth about his birth: his mother worked in a pleasure house. Her silver hair afforded her a certain freedom and a high price. But the strange thing about Hugh’s story is that he remembers his mother telling him that he is “no different from his brother’s sons,” King Viserys and Prince Daemon.
While there may be several explanations, Saera Targaryen being Hugh Hammer’s mother makes the most sense. For one thing, Jaehaerys’s love for his wife, Alysanne, suggests he didn’t have many bastard children and certainly wouldn’t have acknowledged them. The only time Fire & Blood mentions the subject is during the Great Council, when a hedge knight claims to be Jaehaerys’s son, and the king dismisses the testimony as slander.
Who is Saera Targaryen in Fire & Blood?
Saera Targaryen was the disowned daughter of King Jaehaerys and one of the greatest challenges to his reign. As the ninth child of Jaehaerys and Alyssane, Saera was a well-known princess, though her falling out with her family led to her being largely forgotten during the final years of Jaehaerys’s reign. Fire & Blood portrays her as a willful and charming girl with a mischievous and occasionally cruel nature. Saera quickly learned the influence she could wield over men and used it to her advantage, choosing her favorites: Jonah Mooton, Roy Connington, and Braxton Beesbury. Years later, she caused a scandal when it was revealed that she had been intimate with all three.
Hugh Hammer’s Mother (Image Credit: Wiki of Thrones)
When confronted, Saera claimed she wanted to marry all three of them, comparing herself to Maegor the Cruel, who had six wives. This intensified Jaehaerys’s fury, and he confined her to her chamber and declared that Saera was no longer his daughter. He also punished the three men: Mooton was forced to marry Saera’s close friend, who was also involved in the scandal; Connington chose exile; and Beesbury faced the king in a trial by combat, in which he was killed.
Alysanne tried to reconcile them, but Saera escaped from her chamber and attempted to claim a dragon as a means of escape. She was caught by a dragonkeeper and punished by her father: Jaehaerys sent Saera away to join the Faith as a Silent Sister. However, she did not remain to serve her punishment and fled to Lys, where she worked in brothels, pretending to be a devout woman of the Faith. Eventually, she moved to Volantis to run her own establishment. Although Alysanne supposedly wrote to her daughter, Saera never replied, and when the queen begged her husband to bring back his only surviving child, he refused.
However, Jaehaerys missed Saera. Fire & Blood states that the king changed after his daughter left. And when he was old and dying, he mistook the young Alicent Hightower for Saera when she entered his chamber to read to him.
Saera Targaryen is the mother of Hugh Hammer in House of the Dragon. In George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, Hugh Hammer’s parentage is never confirmed, but it makes sense that he is Saera Targaryen‘s son. After fleeing Westeros, the princess’s story is shrouded in rumor, but it is known that she had children.
During the Great Council, three men claiming to be Saera’s sons made their case for the Iron Throne (one was said to resemble a young Jaehaerys). However, they were not considered, as Jaehaerys had legitimate grandchildren.
The only discrepancy with House of the Dragon regarding Saera Targaryen‘s story as Hugh Hammer’s mother is that she never returned to Westeros. In Fire & Blood, she is said to have settled in Volantis, boasting of having created her own kingdom there. In that case, Hugh—who admits to being ashamed—could have moved to Westeros to escape his mother’s reputation.
While Jaehaerys had many descendants, Saera Targaryen is the only one with confirmed bastard children, though her siblings certainly could have had their own as well. But being Saera’s son means Hugh has as much Targaryen blood as Jace (Harry Collett), Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), which explains why he can claim Vermithor when other dragon-scions perish in the attempt: the illegitimate son of a disowned branch of the family still carries the dragon’s blood, which the beast recognizes.
Hugh Hammer, being Saera Targaryen‘s son, also adds a touch of irony to the story: By claiming Jaehaerys’s dragon, Hugh defies his grandfather’s disavowal of his mother and proves that she was always his daughter, whether he liked it or not.
A more charitable interpretation is that it highlights Jaehaerys’s regret at the end of his life, giving Saera’s bloodline a chance to return to their family. Although House of the Dragon never delves into Saera Targaryen‘s story as Hugh’s mother, it places him in direct relation to Jaehaerys, Rhaenyra’s great-grandfather.
